“Yeah, I overheard the boss telling somebody—can’t remember now who—that he had a transmission guy who’s top-notch. Even better,” he said with a wink, “he gives cops a discount on repairs or replacement. My gears have been grinding lately, and I thought—”
“That’s a pile of bullshit, Bowie.”
John frowned with puzzlement. “Really? Which part? The boss doesn’t have a guy? Or he has a guy, but the guy doesn’t give discounts?”
The ogre gave him a baleful look. “I’ve got work to do.” He sidestepped John but deliberately rammed into his left shoulder on his way past, snarling in an undertone, “I’m on to you.”
“Goes both ways,” John said as he flicked a piece of colored paper at the ogre’s face. It hit him square in his broad forehead, bounced off, and fell to the floor.
The ogre looked down and saw that it was a gum wrapper, wadded into a ball, rain-soaked and muddy, but recognizable as the brand he habitually chewed.
He raised his oversize head. The two men stared eye-to-eye with full understanding of each other’s malice. The ogre was the first to break away and resume his progress down the hallway.
Earlier, when John had returned to his house to retrieve Beth’s things, he’d given the dwelling, the shed, and the property a thorough inspection. He’d even searched his SUV for a tracking device.
He’d found the gum wrapper near the entrance to the cul-de-sac. He figured the ogre had left his car on the shoulder of the main road while he’d explored the dead-end lane on foot.
After the torturous farewell scene with Beth in the hotel parking lot, he’d driven all the way back to the fishing camp, returned the compact car to the camouflaged garage, secured the cabin, and then had paddled the boat back to his house, where he’d dragged it into its hiding place.
Taking those precautionary steps had been time-consuming, but he’d felt they were necessary. He would have to be extra vigilant now that the ogre had discovered where he lived. He was even reluctant to leave Mutt alone in the house. Before locking him in, he’d told him, “If anyone poses a threat to you, tear his throat out.”
At least he’d made the ogre aware that he was aware.
Now, as he entered the CAP unit, he greeted fellow detectives with a raised hand or a terse hello but didn’t stop to chat with anyone. When he reached his desk, he booted up his computer and checked his email inbox, but only tackled the time-sensitive ones.
Or tried to tackle them. He would be in the middle of composing a reply when he’d realize that his hands had come to rest motionless on the keyboard. Sentences were left unfinished because his mind continued to revert to those last few minutes with Beth.
When they’d parted, the disappointment and accusation in her eyes had submersed him in guilt. Recalling those same eyes, dazed and lambent after their kiss, filled him with lust.
Re-filled him with lust. Because he’d been bedeviled ever since he’d slid into the booth in that bar and looked into her face. He’d wanted her before he’d learned that she wasn’t just some restless barfly hoping for an afternoon delight, but rather a smart and ambitious woman… who had the potential to make his life hell on earth again.
In that most unromantic of settings, he’d wanted her right then. He’d wanted to see what kind of hair was tucked under the ball cap. He’d wanted to see under her white t-shirt. He’d wanted to see her under him, naked and tangled up.
He still wanted that. But being around her also had awakened him to the hollowness inside him. The Mellin case and its aftermath had scooped him out. She’d been right about that, and he’d purposefully kept himself empty. But now, because of her, an alien yearning was seeping into that vacancy. He denounced it. He couldn’t give it a foothold. He must not.
“Not gonna happen.” He spoke in a whisper so the coworker nearest him wouldn’t overhear, but he felt he had to say it aloud in order to affirm it, to make it substantive and permanent.
And anyway, she’d made plain her contempt. Because he’d refused to get involved, she thought he was a self-preserving coward. Well, he would just have to live with her low opinion, because his refusal was final.
“So get over it, John.”
He propped his elbow on the edge of his desk and cupped his hand over his mouth. He stared at the words on his monitor, which he didn’t remember typing and could make no sense of now. He watched the cursor blink.
But his focus on it didn’t prevent him from hearing Beth’s impassioned voice. “… the individual who took Crissy… still out there… waiting for Thursday night…”
“Shhhhhit!”
Before he could talk himself out of it, he discreetly reached beneath his desk and into his boot, where he’d had a thin pocket sewn into the shaft. He slid a thumb drive from it.
After Barker was appointed head of the CAP unit, John had surreptitiously transferred the entire Mellin case file onto two thumb drives. He kept one in his boot. In the event that a cold case investigation into Mellin ever ensued and, coincidentally, John and the file were to suddenly disappear from the department, Mitch had the second thumb drive.
He inserted his into a port and began searching for a name and a telephone number in Galveston. It took him a frustrating twenty minutes to find that information; then he placed the call from one of his burner phones.
“Detective Morris, please,” he said to the person who answered. When asked to identify himself, he did. “I’m working a case here, and I believe Morris might be able to provide me with some background on a suspect.” He was asked to hold.
Moments later, a female voice said, “Gayle Morris.”
As John introduced himself, he realized that his palms were damp, his mouth dry. “I’m calling about a missing person case you had in May of 2022. Larissa Whitmore.”
He heard her sigh. “You don’t forget those.”
“No, you don’t. Were her remains ever recovered?”
“Negative. Not a trace.”
“What’s Patrick Dobbs’s status?”
“He was convicted of statutory rape, now serving his sentence. He’s filed an appeal.”
“On what grounds?”
“He claims that the whole time he and Larissa were together, she used a fake ID that put her age at twenty-one. It fooled bartenders as well as him. He didn’t know she was a minor.”
“That argument didn’t come out at his trial?”
“It did, and it was supported by several witnesses. But the prosecutor shot it down. He and Larissa were stoned, all over each other, sex was a sure thing. Therefore, the prosecutor argued, it would have been in the accused’s best interest not to question her age. The jury thought so, too.”
John fiddled with a stray paperclip as he pondered the blowback that might come from taking this conversation further. To hell with it. “Detective, please don’t think I’m a loony tune.”